Happy 110 birthday Ayn Rand!
Posted by Michael Keith on Feb 2, 2015 in Ayn Rand | 0 commentsIn a small book a friend gave me called Myths about Ayn Rand, several well-known misconceptions were treated (AR was a conservative, an elitist, wasn’t a serious philosopher) but the one misconception I blurted out before opening the book doesn’t appear: AR had no sense of humor.
Anyone familiar with her writing, either fiction or not, knows this is simply not true.
To celebrate what would have been Rand’s 110 birthday, I post a passage that still makes me laugh though I’ve read it countless times, from “Art and Moral Treason” in The Romantic Manifesto.
“Apart from its many other evils, conventional morality is not concerned with the formation of a child’s character. It does not teach or show him what kind of man he ought to be and why; it is concerned only with imposing a set of rules upon him — concrete, arbitrary, contradictory and, more often than not, incomprehensible rules, which are mainly prohibitions and duties. A child whose only notion of morality (i.e., of values) consists of such matters as: ‘Wash your ears!’ — ‘Don’t be rude to Aunt Rosalie!’ — ‘Do your homework!’ — ‘Help papa to mow the lawn (or mama to wash the dishes)!’ — faces the alternative of: either a passively amoral resignation, leading to a future of hopeless cynicism, or a blind rebellion.”